the music of ambient loop guitarist dave stafford and the pureambient microlabel

Tag Archives: Guitars

I think it’s a good thing, from time to time, to indulge your obsessions, and what musicians often refer to as “gear lust” has certainly affected me from time to time.

but these days, that very general lust for guitars, keyboards, amps, and all kinds of music gear, is also now joined by a very specific new affliction; the endless watching and listening to of, effects pedal demo videos. On You Tube, of course.

as with all new phases (if you will pardon the expression) of internet development and the progress of content, it started out small, as the occasional demo of a pedal to show us what the pedal looked like, what it sounded like, in case we might then wish to buy it for our own pedalboards at home.

from professionally produced by the established old world pedal manufacturers – your Boss, your MXR, your Electro-Harmonix, your Digitech, and so on – to videos by the boutique crews – your Earthquaker Devices, your Chase Bliss, your Catalinbread, your Z. Vex, your Robert Keeley – first came videos that were mostly about sales, but with generous helping of sounds, too – but ultimately, were on the whole, made with sales in mind.

finally, now, another type of pedal demo has arrived – the artistic, creative demo – and these seem to be non-commercial, not sales-oriented – but instead, they focus solely on the sounds that each device can make, and what a creative musician might do with those sounds.

A good example of one of these creative style effects video makerscreative style effects video makers, would be You Tube artist ‘Knobs‘, who tends towards more in-depth analyses of effects units, but using a unique artistic style – found objects, arranged around the device in a very careful way – combined with a fantastic, verbose, humorous set of titles (a veritable barrage of typed information, instead of verbal narration) and explanations, interspersed with jokes and bizarre video snippets, anything goes, but “Knobs” has a brilliant and consistent artistic style – and I NEVER ever feel like he wants me to buy any particular pedal. He just wants me, and the rest of the effects pedal world, to HEAR how brilliant each pedal is, in exquisite detail, providing both highly useful technical information alongside humorous vignettes of all types – you never know WHAT might happen in one of his videos.

I have been through a lot of these videos, all types, and I seem to have settled on a few favourites from both camps. For the ‘quick overview” type of video, which might run between 4 and 8 minutes in extreme cases, my very favourite vendor is “Andy” from Pro Guitar Shop (and Tone Report weekly magazine – the most brilliant magazine ever dedicated solely to effects pedals – and it’s free, every week!) – Andy is an extremely proficient guitarist of some experience, and his skill at showing each pedal he demos off in it’s best light, is undeniable – but, it is usually a quick demo only, just to get an idea of what the device in question sounds like.

Generally speaking, they don’t get into a lot of detail, or do in-depth videos, except in a few extreme cases. So for the quick overview – I always turn to Andy first, and his videos are always in heavy rotation at my house – plus, over time, I’ve watched him grow from a good guitarist into a great guitarist, and I really enjoy his playing, regardless of the subject songs or snippets, or what pedal he is demoing – he is just a good, good player.

My other (new) favourite has to be “Knobs” whoever he might be – his videos are always well in-depth, and he tries very hard to describe clearly and in great detail, what each control does, exactly, and, how the controls interact, and what combinations of controls you need to set to achieve certain musical goals – all typed out in his inimitable style. But – be prepared to keep your eyes glued to the screen – the titles go by quickly. Having the no-nonsense explanations of how an effect’s controls affect what sound you acquire, is extremely useful (to me) and I really appreciate both his attention to musical detail, a well as his remarkable sense of humour which has to be read to be appreciated!

Some videos favour verbal narration along with guitar sound, others, use titles as “Knobs” does, to explain what the pedal is doing (which allows the music and therefore, the sound of the pedal, to go undisturbed by narration, others, such as our friend Andy from Pro Guitar Shop, intersperses narrated sections with undisturbed musical sections to demo the sounds he has just discussed, and I’ve even seen videos where there are no titles and no narration – and the pedal, and where it’s knobs are turned to, has to tell the entire story without any supporting titles or narration. Those kinds of videos, while interesting, are probably a bit less informative than the other types, but really, no matter what the content, no matter whether they are short form, long form, or no form – I enjoy them all.

I would say that during the last two weeks, I’ve easily spent six or seven hours watching (and listening to) guitar effects videos, usually on YouTube on my television, but often, on YouTube on my tablet – either way works for me. It is becoming an addiction, and for example, today, a lazy Sunday, I started watching Earthquaker Devices videos from the moment I got up, and now, a few hours later, I have to admit – the videos are still running while I am typing this blog.

And I was watching them yesterday, too. Hmmm. I am sensing a pattern here. It started out, with a few Pro Guitar Shop quick overview with Andy videos, at night at bedtime – and then it started to move onto the real TV during the day, and today, I was even watching them during my lunch.

Another aspect of this that is good, is the musical ideas presented by the various musician-presenters, and you get some extraordinary guitarists demonstrating pedals, from Pete Thorn who has a massive collection of effects and pedalboard related videos, and onto other ridiculously talented guitarists hired by the big guns to demo their products, like the amazing Alex Hutchings who does demos of very complex Roland effects units. So becoming addicted to effects pedal videos does have some very positive side effects – one of which is learning about some of the amazing professional players out there, as well as learning about a whole new group of home or small business musicians, who are equally talented and are often extremely interesting to listen to.

I’ve even learned guitar techniques, riffs and other guitar content, just from watching these demos, they are often quite inspirational, and often, after I’ve viewed a set of guitar effects demos, my tendency is to then go into the studio and play some guitar, and use the pedals that I do have, to try and create some new ideas and uses for them. So watching these demos, and hearing how other guitarists put these very musical tools to use, is also very inspirational for my own development not just as a player, but also, in how I use the effects I have, to create unique and hopefully, amazing-sounding guitar sounds.

Mixing and matching different effects pedals (often called “stacking”) is yet another kind of pedal demo video, and there are endless demos where one or many devices are “stacked” to hear what the sound outputs of various interesting pedal combinations are, what is possible when you plug pedal a into pedal b, and then into pedal c? These are some of the most amazing videos, because the sounds that can be achieved via stacking, even if it’s just stacking two pedals, are often astonishing in themselves – from incredibly powerful, distortion based stacks, to eerie, spacey, ambient wonders – amazing combinations with endless musical possiblity.

Finally, there are the “versus” (or “vs.” or “v.”) effects pedal videos, which range from comparisons of different manufacturers’ pedals that perform similar functions, or, between reissues or clones, to the “original” pedals from the 60s, 70s, 80s and so on. Does the new version sound as good (or better) or not? The “versus” videos answer all of these questions and more – which fuzz tone sounds the best, which overdrive is the most transparent, which reverb has the most ambient possibilities, which ring modulator gives you the most insanely distorted and warped sounds?? – I am a big fan of the “versus’ style of effects pedal videos.

As time has gone on, I’ve become very interested in certain pedal manufacturers, and this is probably the last category of video I will mention today: the “about the manufacturer” video. For the lines I’ve become interested in, after exhausting the majority of their videos for their actual pedals, I recently branched out still further, and started learning about some of the people behind the products – beginning with a pedal manufacturer that I really admire, Earthquaker Devices, and while I so far, so not own any of their pedals, I am very interested in some of them, because – well for two reasons, really, they are all hand-made in Akron, Ohio, and, they often explore sonic territory that other manufacturers’ pedals do not. So I wanted to learn more – and boy, was there ever a lot of content available about Earthquaker – their history, the bands that their employees are in, and so on – absolutely fascinating to watch, and after doing so – it just makes me want to go out and buy my top ten EQD-wanted pedals – which would set me back a few thousand pounds that I do not have.

But – these videos do allow for one thing – I can dream. I have a want list, that changes almost every week, one week, I am wanting EQD pedals, the next, I am looking at Strymon pedals with my lustful effects desiring eyes – and so on. I dream of building special pedalboards, using all of the strangest sounding Earthquaker Devices pedals, in a special all-EQD board – probably containing an Arpanoid, a Space Spiral, an Afterneath, a Transmisser, and an Avalanche Run for starters (as the imaginary pound notes start to fly out the imaginary window…) which is huge fun – and while I probably won’t ever be able to build that imaginary EQD board, what I can do, is go into the sound libraries of my Eventide H9s, and see if I can emulate the strange and wonderful sounds that EQD pedals make, with the Eventide Algorithms and settings for individual voices.

That is then, giving me ideas for my own guitar sounds, which happen to be Eventide-based, but that is not what is important – getting new ideas for new sounds is always inspirational, so I think that this new addiction to effects pedal videos, is absolutely one of the healthiest addictions I’ve ever had the joy to experience, and I recommend it highly to both musicians and non-musicians like, and in particular, I think that visual artists and anyone who appreciates art, would enjoy some of the content in the more creative series of effects pedal videos.

I cannot recommend the experience of tuning in to You Tube for a morning of video enjoyment, preferably with your theatre speaker engaged so you can experience the subtelty of tones that the guitarists bring to us in these amazing, informative, inspirational videos – I think they are brilliant – please check them out on a tablet or a TV set near you.

And now, I am off to turn on my own pedalboards and see what new sounds I can coax from it, after a day of being very inspired indeed, by hearing what modern sound technology can do to the sound of a guitar or a keyboard or even a voice – these effects pedals have come so incredibly far from the early days, when if you had a pedal board at all, you were unusual, and it would normally have two devices on it – a Vox wah-wah pedal, and an Arbiter Fuzz Face.

A few players might have a third device – a primitive Octaver like the one Jimi Hendrix used to use – but for most, it was a wah-wah pedal, a fuzz tone of some sort, or if you were really lucky, both – no matter what, you learned to use those primitive devices make your guitar sound better…and nowadays, you have not hundreds, but thousands of different effect pedal designs to choose from – a mind-boggling assortment of sound-creating machines, designed by musicians for musicians – with making amazing sounds the goal – and so often, these manufacturers not only hit that goal, but they exceed it, producing devices capable of a stunning diversity of incredibly musical sound…it’s amazing how far these devices have come over the relatively short period of time from let’s say, 1963, to today. Simply astonishing technology.

I started out with just a Vox Wah-Wah, and that was my main pedal for a long, long time. Then gradually, I ended up with things like an original Echoplex, which I absolutely loved, primitive, monstrous, tape-driven delay – I also used my two-track Sony reel-to-reel as a delay, with a reel running in record mode so I could then switch on the delay whilst playing live. It wasn’t easy to do, but it sounded great!

Over time, I went through many Stompboxes, then onto rack mount devices (controlled by MIDI and switches and expression pedals – and then back again. I can tell you – it’s all good. I managed to make good music with every pedalboard I ever built, and I am glad to have been able to experience a wide range of musical products over time, and it’s made for the creation of a lot of very interesting music – from very loud and distorted, to as ambient and quiet as I could get – I am interested in it all. I think maybe it’s more of an addiction to amazing sounds, than the actual videos – I just love the sound of guitar effects!

I grew up in the Beatle Era. The Beatles invaded America when I was four, five years old. One of my earliest memories is of, standing on the lawn of the family home at 6728 Mineral Drive, in what is now San Carlos, California and hearing the sparkling guitars and soaring vocal harmonies of a new Beatles track called “Nowhere Man”. I’ve never been able to forget that moment, because from then on, the Beatles were “my band”.

I wanted to be George Harrison; I wanted a guitar for my ninth birthday, and, I got one. But I didn’t end up learning to play one properly until a bit later, when I was 12, 13 years old, and there were all these amazing new groups and albums like “Led Zeppelin II” or “No Time” by “The Guess Who”, so much amazing music to explore…

But I never ever got over my initial love for the music of the Beatles,and it really was, for me, the sound of the guitars that reeled me in, that caught my ears and my attention…in particular, the sound of George Harrison, who played a really magical role that was called “lead guitar”. The guy who had to be serious, had to play the most difficult parts live. For several years, I only had albums by The Beatles…I mean, you don’t really need anything else, do you?
I wanted to be that guy, I really did want to be George – and later on, as George grew as a songwriter, turning out amazing tunes like his trio of songs from the “revolver” album:

Taxman

Love You To

I Want To Tell You

…surely, three of the most amazing “pop songs” ever written or recorded, sheer Harrison genius – nobody saw it coming, we all figured, Lennon and McCartney, those are the two guys to watch in this band, those are the writers….well, yes, but really, all four of the Beatles were the writers, and even Ringo wrote some great tunes…but for me, it’s always been all about George, those odd B-sides like the astonishing “Old Brown Shoe” or the seriously beautiful “The Inner Light”…where do songs that unique, that incredible, COME from?

The imagination of one man, Beatle George. The mind that brought us the wit of “Piggies” and the warning of “Savoy Truffle” but then there was his lead guitar playing too, not just on his own songs, but on many of those Lennon andMcCartney songs, too. A new kind of lead guitar, razor sharp fuzz tones, detuned guitars (think of the lead solo in “Fixing A Hole” from Sgt. Pepper) when you heard it, you knew it was George. A simply brilliant guitar tone, and a beautiful, concise style.

As the years progressed, George got into playing slide guitar, and very very quickly, developed a trademark slide guitar “tone” (think of the slide guitars on John Lennon’s “How Do You Sleep?” from the “Imagine” album) some of George’s finest slide work…you should hear the out takes from that session, too, on the Lennon box set…amazing slide guitar. But the special tone George got for his slide parts, which really only reached full maturity by the time of his second solo studio album, “Living In The Material World”, which, by the way, is an amazing collection of truly beautiful songs…you owe it to yourself to hear this record if you haven’t done so, so far…its quietly brilliant.

George was always economical with his guitar playing, he never over played, and it was that economy, which at first, was an enforced economy, it was Beatle-driven, here’s your eight bars George, go for it – so George learned to play well in a very small piece of allotted “solo” time. As time progressed, George did play some nice, longer solos, but that economy was always present, he always reigned himself in and never got boring or predictable.

You never knew what you were going to get with George, and his own songs were a mystery even to the other Beatles, who would bemusedly play on, say, 102 takes of a song like “Not Guilty” without complaint, as George continued the search for that elusive ‘perfect take’, and if it took 102 takes then that’s what it takes.

In some cases, no Beatles version was considered “good enough”, so we simply waited, and eventually we did get to hear the properly recorded version of the song “All Things Must Pass” – on a George Harrison record, not on a Beatles album. The same held true for “Not Guilty” where we had to wait even longer for George’s “perfected” version – again, on a George Harrison album, not on a Beatles album.
If you happened to own or know where to borrow the right Beatle bootlegs, then you might have at least heard the Beatles’ versions of “All Things Must Pass” and “Not Guilty” but most people had to wait until George put out the definitive editions of those songs.

I never minded waiting, although I do remember being very impatient to get George’s first solo album, the three LP “All Things Must Pass” and I first heard it in Uganda, in the home of some Peace Corp workers who had the brand new pre-recorded cassette version of the album, so that was very exciting, and then I got to hear it in Amsterdam, too, in a massive record store, complete with 60s erotic posters (“wow” was all I could say) – where I had to motion to the bored Dutch girl to turn the record over again, please…five times, because I didn’t know a single word of Dutch.

I finally purchased my own copy, in the Netherlands, and took it back to the USA with me, where I played it endlessly. The only record that excited me more than ATMP was the forthcoming “Concert For Bangladesh” which was another one I just couldn’t wait for, the idea was fantastic, half the Beatles plus Clapton and even the reclusive Bob Dylan…here were another six sides of amazing music, but amazingly, over time, it is Side One that stands the test of time the best, with Ravi Shankar on sitar, and the amazing Ali Akbar Khan on sarod, Alla Rakah on tabla…their piece of Bangladeshi folk music, “Bangla Dhun” just absolutely blows me away. These performers are at the top of their skill level, and are playing with speed, accuracy, and sheer musical joy….its amazing to see it in the film version, it truly is the best part of the concert!

That performance opened up my fourteen year old eyes to the sheer beauty of Indian melody and music, and I followed the careers of Shankar and Khan until the present day. Each the master of their instrument, I had George Harrison to thank for bringing that music into my life. And years later, that led me to a house concert at Ravi Shankar’s house in Encinitas, California, where I sat on the floor and listened to Ravi’s daughter play with the remarkable Bikram Ghosh on tabla…a remarkable “house concert” that I will never forget.

I was lucky enough too, to see Ravi and Anoushka performing live in more standard music venues, too and their music has always blessed my ears with its beauty.

So the influence of George Harrison changed me as a person, so much, that I went from being a fan of pop and rock, to being one who also loves the sarod, and loves listening to the master of the sarod, Ali Akbar Khan, play the sarod. Sure, it started on TV, watching the famous Ed Sullivan show where the Beatles performed, and seeing how serious George was, playing his lead guitar lines so carefully and so perfectly, and taking his concise eight bar solo so carefully, too…

Then it was the movie “A Hard Day’s Night” watching George playing his intensely cool guitar parts on film, trying to analyse what he was playing, on something like “You’re Going To Lose That Girl” trying to understand what he was doing with his guitar parts and then, that mad solo…amazing stuff. All the while, singing his harmony vocal parts as if they were easy, as if the guitar part was easy, he made it look easy!

And then there was that tender rendition of “And I Love Her” the first great Beatle love song, and that was my first exposure to nylon string classical guitar, and George worked it out and played the lead parts beautifully in that tune…really simple, yes, but really effective and quite beautiful when you are a young George-guitarist-wannabe like I was…I thought that performance was incredible, and really beautiful…and a lot of that is down to how George handles the nylon guitar part.

That inspired me directly, seeing George play on TV and in films, and hearing him on record, too, on vinyl, was a true inspiration for a budding teenage guitarist such as myself. But later,by presenting the music of Ravi Shankar and friends to the Western world, that opened me up to an entire new universe of music. Thousands of years old oral traditions, of the sitar and the ragas, or rags, that Shankar learned from his teacher, that stretched.back in time, an amazing musical heritage and proud tradition…brought to me by Beatle George.

He really was The Quiet Renaissance Man of the Beatles, later, he brought an entire Indian orchestra into the studio to record “Within You Without You” in 1967…and in 1974, at the Los Angeles Forum, I saw a different Indian orchestra perform, led by Ravi Shankar, the opening act for the first of just two solo tours undertaken by George, live in 1974, playing brilliantly but with a hoarse voice…and again, in less stressful times, 1991 in Japan with his old friend Eric Clapton.

I feel so privileged that I got to see George play, and his guitar playing was awesome, including some of that amazing slide (in the first song, no less) and it was a night I’ve never forgotten. In fact, over time, I managed to see three of the four Beatles perform live…so I am very fortunate indeed. Only Lennon eluded me, but three out of four is not bad at all. At that 1974 Forum gig, George even played his specially modified version of Lennon’s “In My Life” and that was really cool.

George Harrison, the guitarist, was a huge inspiration to me as a kid, and I absolutely took up the guitar because of him, and the rest of the Beatles too. When I was a kid growing up, the Beatles were our heroes, and they raised the bar so high, that soon they became the benchmark to judge new groups by: “they’re OK, but they are not as good as the Beatles” – I don’t know how many times I said that about groups, or if a group was good, you’d say they were “almost as good as the Beatles”…it was the benchmark by which all other groups were measured, for years after the Beatles themselves broke up…we still judged new bends against their music….

Sure, in time, as I grew older, there came guitarists with more technical skill than George, but most of those players, probably looked up to the Beatles in the same way I did. OK, George was no Steve Howe or Robert Fripp, but, George did write “Something” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Taxman” and “If I Needed Someone” and “The Inner Light” and “My Sweet Lord” and “Within You Without You” and “Here Comes The Sun” and…

I could go on, but you get it, I’m sure. George didn’t need to play like the proggers, because the proggers built their music on the back of the Beatles and atop the pop music from the end of the 60s, and George’s guitar playing was what it needed to be to realise those songs.

And that includes the whole of “All Things Must Pass” including the remarkable “Apple Jam” where we do get a hint of George’s guitar prowess, holding his own even against Clapton, and sounding amazing across the entire Beatles catalogue, from the very beginning, and on through his 1970 masterpiece, “All Things Must Pass” as well and also on “Living In The Material World” – and occasionally on his later records.

Some of his best guitar work can be found on his 1971 solo album, “Living In The Material World” – especially “that slide” sound; but it cropped up whenever it was needed…on Lennon’s “How Do You Sleep?”, on the 74 and 91 tours…not to mention his standard soloing, on “Apple Jam”, on “Something”, where he famously asked to record the solo along with the live strings overdub, to get a more “live” feel for the solo – and of course, that was the take – the keeper. And what a beauty it is, too.

There are so many specific examples of great Harrison guitars, that I could just keep listing them, but instead, you should just listen…and you will hear them. I certainly did.

What I would give to be able to write a song like “The inner Life”. Or “Something”. Or maybe one that is half as good :-).

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